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Campus Course Evaluation Project

About

Over the past several years, UC Berkeley has been evaluating the possibility of providing instructors and departments with a campus-provided web-based course evaluations tool. In Fall 2013, ETS in conjunction with the Center for Teaching and Learning under the guidance of the ice Chancellor of Undergraduate Education (VCUE) began a small roll out of Blue by eXplorance under the service name Course Evaluations. The service currently supports the process of end-of-term evaluation creation (including department & instructor customization), completion and reporting through an online system. Future plans include support for formative assessment.

The online course evaluation system is centrally managed by Educational Technology Services (ETS) with distributed responsibility at the department level for evaluation customization to meet the needs of individual departments. ETS works in close partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning who is the functional owner of the umbrella project, Online Evaluation of Courses Initiative.

We are excited about implementing our new online system, Blue by Explorance, for many reasons. Some highlights:

Flexible and configurable system to meet the variety of campus needs and workflows

Based on the findings the OEC group led a request for proposal (RFP) for a new evaluation system. This process involved a campus-wide review committee comprised of staff representing academic, technical, and administrative functions on campus.

Key criteria for selection of the new system included ability to achieve the following:

Reduction of Wasteful Expenditures: The current manual process of fielding, collecting, and transcribing paper course evaluations wastes significant student, staff, and academic personnel time. Implementing an electronic solution will eliminate duplicative activities (both within and between units) and speed up the entire process.

Improvement of Evaluative Data: Moving to an online system automates data collection and calculation; improving quality and integrity of the data along with timely access for faculty and departments. Campus-wide data will also improve by the utilization of standardized questions allowing for meaningful comparisons of data across instructors and departments.

Consolidation of Processes/Integration with Berkeley Systems: In addition to consolidating a variety of methods for aggregating and manipulating evaluative data that currently only exist at the unit level and often in a non-electronic format, the new system will tightly integrate with existing Berkeley online resources, such as bSpace, bCourses, EDW, and AP Bears, which will allow Berkeley to better leverage its ongoing technological investments in common services.

With the review team’s input, the campus awarded the contract to eXplorance for their evaluation product, Blue. eXplorance's Blue stood out for the following reasons:

Flexible and configurable system to meet the variety of campus needs and workflows